Railway interline ticket.



J. D. GIBBS.

RAILWAY INTERLINE TICKET.

APPLICATION PILED Nov.z7,1911.

1,103,757, Patented July 14,1914.

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p BAIL'W'AY INTERLINE TICKET.

Specication of Letters Patent.

Application filed November 27, iSll. fSerialNO. 62,752,

To all whom it may concer Be it known that l, JAMES D. Grens, a citizen of the United States, residing atvLouisville, in the county of Jefferson and State oflentucky, have invented new anduseful lmpr-ovemen-ts in Railway-Tickets, of which the following is afspecilioation.

My invention relates to that class of railway tickets variously designated as coupon, thro-ugh or interline tickets, `the last named designation being preferred, and the objects of my improvements are to reduce the cost of providing tickets to cover the virtually innumerable routes and combinations of railwaylines in the United States and obviate as far as possible the necessity for voluminous ticket cases both at the railway vand general oficcsand at ticket agencies.

A further object of my improvement is to facilitate the agents work of issuing inter` line tickets by placing on a single' form all of the routes via common-way-points to a given destination or any designated station on a given terminal or final line of railway.

Heretofore it has ,been necessary for ticket agents to select from a large number of.

tickets the one applying via the route elected by passenger while in the use of my improved ticket a multiplicity of routes, perhaps all available routes via common waypoints to a given destination, are embraced in one ticket thus obviating the necessity on the part of ticket agent ofhandling or inspecting a large number of diflferent forms.

I am aware that multiple-route tickets are not new7 but it is a fact that all which have been used or tried have proved impracticable for the reason that none of them have been sofarranged as to effect a perfect record in the oliices of the issuing and participating railways, and for this reason no polyroute or multiple-route form of ticket has ever come into general use although the rapidly increasing growth of railway routes have made imperative such reform in interline tickets.

The absolute necessity of effective recording or accounting features is obvious inasmuch as it is obligatory upon the part of the issuing railway to properly apportion the revenue collected by the agent and remit to each participating carrier its due proportion according to the service rendered. lt is equally important that each of the participating carriers have a correct and infallible record of the transaction in order to proponly verify the acc-ountingvmade by the issuing carrier and-thus protect its own inter este.

ln the past, ift'has been ineiflectually at way-.points are embraced in asin-rieform,` as will be see-n by reference to the accom-f panying drawing, in whichzy lligure l. is an interline ticket issuedl by the Louisville, Henderson & St. Louis ltail-l way for a trip from any station on its line, via any 4one of twenty yroutes through St. Louis, Kansas lCity andv Denver, to any destination*situated on the Denver and Rio Grande lt. kMg; 2. represents ya forni of ticket issued by the Louisville and N ashville R. R. reading from any station on any one of seven Atlanta rll'erm-inal lines, the elected line to be, in each case, indicated by punch marks. Fig. 3. is the age-nts stub detached from ticket represented by Fig. l, showing the preferred method of indicating the elected route, although it is entirely `practioable to designate a route by punching out the proper route indicator o, o.

lt will be noticed that the abbreviated names'of railways representing the routes, o, in Fig. l, are so grouped and alternated upon the coupons that when folded on the perforations and punched through all of the coupons upon both sides of any one of the lines of routing, a, as shown ated in Fig. 3,v the ticket so punched will represent as distinct a route as if only one route were printed thereon, the route so designated being complete in itself and different from the route that would have been represented by the ticket had any other route been designated.

ln practice, the ticket agent, after ascertaining from passenger the necessary information as to his destination and route, removes one of the tickets from his ticket case, and, after inserting the destination, folds all of the coupons and agents stub on the perforated lines and with one impression of a hand or lever punch designates the route elected by passenger, after which the agents stub is detached and retained by agent and the ticket delivered to passenger. In making his weekly or monthly report of sales the agent, by reference to his stub, enters upon the report the form number, e, of the ticket precededy by the proper route ieteiaeaaaiyia,1am.

indicator",A b, as for instance H 325, the desf.

vthem'on agents report the designated route indicator, are enabled to properly divide the through rate and credit to each participating carrier its due proportion of the revenue. 4

Furthermore,l itv will be seen that the par# ticipating carriers could not accurately calculatel and assure themselves of the correctness of thesaid apportionments unless each coupon bears exactfinformation as to the starting point, destination. and the geographical trend of the ticket throughout. It

y is the common practice to Adesignate on the face of veach coupon the destination, and

stamp on back of each coupon the selling and starting point, andto complete'the information required by all carriers I print on each coupon in geographical rotation the vvarious junction points7 c, via which the passenger is'carried. The auditor and rateclerks of all interested railways are thus enabled to properly check and protect their revenues, land this is not trueof any other Copies of this patent may be obtained for -form of p'olyroute ticket heretofore devised for which reason none of them have ever been found practicable or come into general use.l

fWhile I prefer the letters, of the lalphabet as route indicating characters it is obvious that figures or any other distinctive' char.- acters may be usedto obtain similarfresults without departing from the-spirit of linyjinvention. y Having thus described my invention, what I claim as newand desire to secure by Letters Patent is v f 1. A railway interline ticket having printed on a .succession of coupons a plu-- jrality of -railway names` representing .the routes of the ticket, each transverse line of vroutings being designated `by a distinctive y letter or character andhaving the junctions -or common rway-points printed in geofV p graphical rotation on each coupon` vas dejscribed.

2. A :railway` interline ticket having 'multiplicity of vroutes printed Iin .aline'mentg across a series of coupons, each line of-routg ing being designated by a distinctive letter 4or character, the saidroutes being arrangedv five cents each, by addressing the .Gominis'.iione,r Washington, D. C. l f

se v -1 v,ina plurality of groups on each coupon, andf `havin all ofthe common 'junction pointsff"A 

